Empire State Association Of The Deaf Donates Archive Collection To NTID

The Empire State Association of the Deaf, the state’s oldest and largest organization for deaf people, has donated its archive collection to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology. ESAD officials selected NTID based on its longstanding support of ESAD. RIT Vice President and NTID Dean Dr. T. Alan Hurwitz was president of ESAD from 1975-79.

ESAD, founded in 1865 as the Empire State Association of Deaf Mutes, is an independent, nonprofit organization that advocates on local and state levels for the rights of deaf and hard-of-hearing citizens.

The donated archives contain newsletters, convention notes, and other memorabilia dating from the 1800’s to the present, and offer a glimpse into the evolution of both the organization and deaf culture. Minutes from the 1936 ESAD convention reveal how the word “mutes” was dropped from the group’s title after “lengthy and lively discussion.”

A resolution from a 1940 meeting describes ESAD’s support of New York schools using sign language instead of “an uncertain, awkward, and abstract method of communication known as lipreading.”

NTID is the first and largest technological college in the world for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. One of eight colleges of RIT, NTID offers educational programs and access and support services to the 1,100 deaf and hard-of-hearing students from around the world who study, live, and socialize with 14,400 hearing students on RIT’s Rochester, N.Y., campus.